A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (84 page)

Mary Jane learned of her husband’s first command when his next letter instructed her to go to the Osaka post exchange and have the tailor shop there make up shoulder tabs with the word
RANGER
embroidered on them for the men to sew on their uniforms. He felt the same pride Puckett had of distinction from ordinary infantry and used
the shoulder tabs as one of many ways to impart it to his men. He was overjoyed with his first command precisely because the Rangers were an independent unit; Vann was always happiest as top man. The Korean War and the general expansion for Europe had led to an Army decision to create a number of permanent Ranger companies. Vann was allowed to recruit from within the 25th Division and the general pool of replacements coming to Korea and to expand the company by adding a third platoon, increasing its strength to five officers, including himself, and 107 enlisted men. His enthusiasm brought him far more volunteers than he could accept.

There was no time for formal training. Vann had to develop the skill of his Rangers in whatever free moments he could find and in the fashion the Army calls OJT, the military abbreviation for on-the-job training. In mid-December 1950, as soon as he had brought the company up to strength and rushed it through a couple of exercises to enable the men to function more or less as a unit, Vann and his Rangers were carried by Navy landing craft to the island of Kangwha close to the west coast of Korea in the mouth of the Imjin River. The river mouth was the western end of the defense line Walker was trying to establish along the 38th Parallel. Vann was assigned two missions. The first was to give warning if the Chinese attempted an amphibious landing behind the Eighth Army. The second was more enterprising and dangerous. Vann and his Rangers crossed the river mouth to the mainland in small boats at night and reconnoitered behind Chinese lines to gather intelligence.

The Rangers were evacuated from Kangwha when the Eighth Army retreated again after Walker’s death, but were sent on new behind-the-lines operations to obtain intelligence for the first counteroffensive launched by General Ridgway in late January. Vann had to avoid anything more serious than a skirmish during these missions. An encounter with a large Chinese force would have doomed his men to no purpose. He thought he might have an opportunity to show his mettle on February 10, 1951, when the Rangers teamed up with the tanks of the 25th Division’s mechanized reconnaissance company to help recapture Inchon. There were only stragglers to fight. The Chinese abandoned the city.

Vann did not steal the tale of Puckett’s valor right away. On the contrary, he behaved with the loyalty he always showed toward a brave fellow officer. He was responsible for Puckett’s receiving the Distinguished Service Cross. He interviewed survivors of the night on Hill 205, collected affidavits of Puckett’s courageous leadership, and submitted a recommendation for the award along with a proposed citation to accompany the medal. He also obtained decorations for the enlisted
men who rescued Puckett. When he and Puckett met later at Fort Benning, Vann asked to see the citation and said how pleased he was that it had been approved exactly as he had written it.

The theft of Puckett’s story was to come a dozen years later in Vietnam. Vann appropriated it for a number of reasons. The John Vann of Vietnam could not have been the John Vann he wanted to be and not have led his Ranger company through a night of heroic resistance when the Chinese attacked in Korea. He knew he would have behaved just as courageously as Puckett had, and so he wove the story into his legend. He recalled the details fairly well from having written the citation, and he added a few others to give the episode broader meaning—for example, the “over 500 dead Chinese soldiers” he had seen by the dawn’s light “going down the way the Chinese had come up.” (Puckett didn’t know how many Chinese they had killed. There had been no way to count.)

The picture of hundreds and hundreds of bodies and Vann’s description of the Chinese “human-wave tactics” were useful for his argument in Vietnam that Americans could never win a war of attrition on the Asian mainland. There would always be more of them than of us no matter how much firepower we had, he would say, and then cite what had happened to him and his Ranger company. The way he modified the details in his mind—”when the sixth human-wave attack ran through us”—also reflected the image of China he was to bring to Vietnam. To Vann, China’s millions were not a transitory military asset and a permanent impediment to achieving true power through modernization. Rather, they were an ever-expanding menace to be contained. The image was shared by most Americans of this time. Korea made the image vivid and tangible to Vann.

Like many Army officers of his generation, Vann had a tendency as well to rationalize what happened in North Korea. The Army was too close to its World War II victory to admit that its leaders had been outgeneraled and that, with some exceptions like Puckett’s Rangers and the Marines, the American soldier had been outfought by his Chinese opponents because he was so unprepared and misinformed. Vann told Mary Jane afterward that MacArthur had made a terrible mistake in doing battle with the Chinese, but he was inclined to excuse the defeat by attributing it to numbers. MacArthur’s accomplishments were too large, he had wrapped himself too artfully in the flag and in the pride of the nation, and his excuses were too eloquent for Americans like Vann to see his flaws of character and his loss of touch with his profession. It was to take Truman four and a half months to fire him, and the
president dismissed Mac Arthur then only because the general, in his craving to vindicate his military reputation, insisted on publicly lobbying for all-out war with China. When he came home MacArthur received a hysterical welcome from a country that still loved him.

Ironically, Vann was never to receive the decoration he deserved for saving the rifle companies in the Pusan Perimeter. The major from the intelligence section who witnessed the fights from another spotter plane was preoccupied with his own work and did not mention what he saw to Gassett. Vann’s calm demeanor while loading the ammunition and the luck that none of the planes was seriously damaged gave Gassett the misimpression that the pilots really were exaggerating the risk. Vann was not shy about letting Gassett know that he shuttled trains and truck convoys and moved men and supplies faster than any other division transportation officer in the Eighth Army. (He received a second Bronze Star for his skill at this work during the pursuit of the routed North Koreans up the peninsula after Inchon.) He boasted of these accomplishments to Gassett in the same way he had boasted to Crutchfield about the athletic awards he won at the junior high school in Norfolk. He measured his worth by his achievements. He never gave Gassett any indication of how dangerous the ammunition drops to the surrounded companies had been. His silence did not come from lack of desire for a medal. He told Mary Jane afterward how much he had wanted to win an impressive decoration in Korea. He knew that he would appear to be asking for a medal if he described the flights to Gassett. A medal for bravery was one of the few things he valued so highly that he would not ask or scheme for it. If it did not come his way by itself, he did not want it. He said nothing, and Gassett, a conservative man who believed that an officer took the risks necessary to do his job, only recommended that Vann be given an Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the equivalent of receiving the medal twice. An Air Medal is a mundane award for a specific number of flights in a combat area, without regard to the degree of hazard involved. The recommendation was lost by the clerks somewhere along the chain of command.

(Eight years later in Heidelberg, Germany, the intelligence officer met Gassett again and told him the extraordinary daring he had witnessed. The two men wrote a description of Vann’s exploit, the intelligence officer attached an affidavit of what he had seen, and Gassett recommended that Vann be decorated with the Silver Star for Gallantry. Vann was denied the medal on one of those Catch-22 technicalities that military bureaucrats seem to have a gift for inventing. The law would have permitted him to receive the award by raising Gassett’s original
recommendation for an Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster to a recommendation for the Silver Star. The law even provided for the consideration of lost recommendations if evidence could be found that they had once been submitted. The evidence in Vann’s case was a carbon of the original recommendation in his personnel file and Gassett’s word that he had submitted it. The Office of The Adjutant General ruled that this evidence was insufficient and that separate evidence had to be found in its records to prove that the recommendation had been “placed in military channels” prior to being lost. Separate evidence could not be found, because the recommendation had been lost. Vann would have to wait for Ap Bac to receive his first medal for valor in the Distinguished Flying Cross.)

Vann might still have won the high decoration he wanted in Korea if he had been able to lead his Ranger company long enough to run into a hard fight with the Chinese and distinguish himself. He kept the company only two and a half months. Jesse, who was to object so much to his second war, ended his first one prematurely.

John Vann had never seen his second son. Jesse had been born on August 5, 1950, while his father and the 25th Division were in desperate battle to hold the southwest corner of the Pusan Perimeter. The Army hospital at Osaka was in such turmoil that the nurse was unable to find clean sheets for the bed when Mary Jane went there with labor pains. The obstetrician was in surgery helping with the latest group of wounded to arrive on the planes from Korea and rushed over to the delivery room just before Mary Jane started to give birth.

Jesse was a pretty baby, with light blond hair and large blue eyes, but sickly, without much appetite. Mary Jane blamed his weakness on her foolishness in listening to another obstetrician at the prenatal clinic who had instructed her to diet during her pregnancy. Instead of eating for two, according to her Grandmother Allen’s old saying, as she had done with Patricia and John Allen, she had often eaten little but celery and carrots. In early February 1951, when Jesse was six months old, his breathing became shallow and his eyes began to protrude. He kept moving to the foot of the crib, another old-wives’-tale symptom of illness in a child. Mary Jane couldn’t understand what might be wrong with him, because he was not running a temperature. The pediatrician who examined him at the hospital happened to have worked with meningitis prior to being sent to Japan. He did a spinal tap. The analysis of the fluid showed that Jesse had a form of meningitis, attacking the layer of
tissue covering the brain. The pediatrician told Mary Jane that he might be able to save the baby with a recently developed treatment, but that Jesse’s chances were not good. As she walked down a corridor in shock, Mary Jane met a friend, another officer’s wife who was working at the hospital as a Red Cross volunteer. Mary Jane broke down and told her friend the news. The friend sent an urgent message to Korea through Red Cross channels. Vann found himself on a plane with emergency-leave papers in his pocket.

He surprised her by arriving unexpectedly at the house. The friend had called to say that he was on his way, but he had to change planes in Tokyo and Mary Jane had not known when he would reach Osaka. She was overcome at the joy of having him home again and having him embrace her, despite the reason for his return. He was dressed in clean fatigues he had been given at the delousing station at the Tokyo airfield. He took off his cap to show her how his head had also been shaved to deprive the lice of their best hiding place. He was amused at his bald pate. “Don’t worry about catching any from me,” he said, explaining how thoroughly he had been fumigated.

They drove to the hospital immediately. In the couple of days it had taken for the message to reach the division headquarters and for Vann to return to Osaka, Jesse had started to hold his own against the disease. The doctor was encouraged. Vann comforted Mary Jane. They had been lucky with Patricia and John Allen, he said, and Jesse would recover and someday be as healthy as they were.

When the child survived the crisis and the doctor wanted Vann sent home because Jesse had a long period of recuperation ahead and could get better treatment in the United States, Vann resisted going. The division headquarters was informed of the doctor’s wish and sent Vann a message at the end of February, as his two-week leave was almost over, telling him that he was being given a compassionate transfer. He telephoned Korea and said there was no need for him to go home, that Mary Jane could take Jesse and the two older children to her parents in Rochester by herself. He said he wanted to return to his company. The headquarters assumed he was trying to behave like a good soldier and refused to listen. He was told that as a captain he would be coming up for rotation during the summer in any case to attend the next Advanced Course at the Infantry School at Fort Benning. In the meantime an officer with his experience was needed at the new Ranger Training Command there. His reassignment orders were being cut. He had no choice.

Mary Jane sensed how much he resented giving up the war and his
Ranger company. His attitude hurt her badly. She had looked forward eagerly to having him return and to sharing things with him again. Physically nothing was different between them. The physical attraction had always been strong and they renewed the relationship undiminished, but John did not reminisce when they were together and reveal his thoughts as he had before. She tried to talk to him about the life that she and the children had led while he had been away. He did not respond. She could tell that his mind was still in Korea with his company. She may also have sensed a change in him because they had reacted so differently to the war. For him the war had been the most fulfilling experience of his life. No time had hung on his hands. Nothing had been trivial or dull. Every day had been meaningful, every act important and urgent. He had been fascinated to learn how he excelled at war’s demands, how far he could rise above other men in its test. Intellectually she had accepted the justification of the war at face value, as she did everything else she was told. Emotionally she had rejected it, because the war had taken John away and what she saw of it frightened her.